Stop there: Cardboard cutout DOC rangers deterring wayward glacier visitors
Sunday, 22 January 2023
Storms and melting ice have dramatically reduced access to the West Coast’s glaciers, but that hasn’t stopped some tourists taking matters into their own hands.
The Department of Conservation (DOC) has been forced to erect new, large warning signs featuring a life-size cutout of a DOC ranger to deter visitors who want to steal a closer look at the famous ice flows.
In 2020, a group of tourists had to be rescued from Franz Josef Glacier after ignoring smaller warning signs.
The problem is the glaciers are disappearing.
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Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier have been melting rapidly in recent years.
Between 2015 and 2019, New Zealand’s glaciers lost an average of 1.5m of thickness each year – nearly seven times higher than the reduction between 2000 and 2004.
Walking access onto the two glaciers themselves stopped in 2012 due to unstable ice. Then a storm in 2019 washed away both the walking track to Franz Josef Glacier and the access road to the Fox Glacier, meaning they can only be viewed from a distance.
Winkie Chau, a freelance tour guide and journalist, said he first walked on Franz Josef Glacier in 1979 when people could scramble up onto the spectacular towering ice as it inched its way towards a car park – a spot where visitors can now only catch a glimpse of the glacier from behind large red warning signs.
Chau estimates the signs are 2.5km from the ice.
He had been documenting the glacier’s retreat for years. Since 2008, he calculated it had lost more than 1.56km in length.
“I have a lot of experience and see how the glaciers are retreating a lot but even in the car park there has been a lot of changes.”
“The last four times I’ve gone there is different now there is no walking track to close to the glacier. It’s quite far away.”
Chau visited Fox Glacier late last month and could not believe how quiet the village was.
“There are no people walking around the street. There are no people, no coach buses.”
Chau’s guests from Singapore and Hong Kong got a helicopter ride onto the ice, which is now the only way to access it. But it can cost from $295 for a snow landing to $600 for a guided ice tour.
“I always emphasised to guests from overseas that it is the only place you can see glaciers extend to rainforest and the sea,” Chau said. “Not in Alaska, China, South America, only New Zealand. But now you cannot.”
A DOC spokesperson said the Waiho River changed course after the 2019 storm and now flows through where the end of the walking track to Franz Josef Glacier used to be.
The spokesperson said the track was not closed. People could walk about 30 minutes up it to get a view of the glacier before being stopped by the signs and the cardboard cutout of a DOC ranger.
A few visitors had been confused whether they could access the glacier on foot but a new map with the updated walking tracks was released last month to help, the spokesperson said.
The 2019 storm caused unprecedented damage to DOC assets in Fox Glacier including the access road and tracks, which came on top of damaging landslides over the previous 12 months. The Government decided not to rebuild the road.
Then DOC, Te Rūnanga o Makaawhio and the community came together to find solutions to sustain tourism.
One of these was the recently-opened easy access viewpoint named Te Kopikopiko o Te Waka, a few kilometres west of Fox Glacier township, which allows visitors to see the glacier without having to walk far or take a flight.
People could also view the Fox Glacier from a walkway/cycleway after a 40-minute walk up south bank of Fox River.